Speeches: Literary and Social

Speeches: Literary and Social

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Title: Speeches: Literary and Social
Author: Charles Dickens
Release Date: February, 1997 [EBook #824] [This file was first posted
on March 1, 1997] [Most recently updated: September 25, 2002]

Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SPEECHES:
LITERARY AND SOCIAL ***

Transcribed from the 1880 Chatto and Windus edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

SPEECHES: LITERARY AND SOCIAL BY CHARLES DICKENS

SPEECH: EDINBURGH, JUNE 25, 1841.

[At a public dinner, given in honour of Mr. Dickens, and presided over
by the late Professor Wilson, the Chairman having proposed his health
in a long and eloquent speech, Mr. Dickens returned thanks as
follows:-]
If I felt your warm and generous welcome less, I should be better able
to thank you. If I could have listened as you have listened to the
glowing language of your distinguished Chairman, and if I could have
heard as you heard the "thoughts that breathe and words that burn,"
which he has uttered, it would have gone hard but I should have caught
some portion of his enthusiasm, and kindled at his example. But every
word which fell from his lips, and every demonstration of sympathy
and approbation with which you received his eloquent expressions,
renders me unable to respond to his kindness, and leaves me at last all
heart and no lips, yearning to respond as I would do to your cordial
greeting--possessing, heaven knows, the will, and desiring only to find
the way.
The way to your good opinion, favour, and support, has been to me
very pleasing--a path strewn with flowers and cheered with sunshine. I
feel as if I stood amongst old friends, whom I had intimately known
and highly valued. I feel as if the deaths of the fictitious creatures, in

which you have been kind enough to express an interest, had endeared
us to each other as real afflictions deepen friendships in actual life; I
feel as if they had been real persons, whose fortunes we had pursued
together in inseparable connexion, and that I had never known them
apart from you.
It is a difficult thing for a man to speak of himself or of his works. But
perhaps on this occasion I may, without impropriety, venture to say a
word on the spirit in which mine were conceived. I felt an earnest and
humble desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless
cheerfulness. I felt that the world was not utterly to be despised; that it
was worthy of living in for many reasons. I was anxious to find, as the
Professor has said, if I could, in evil things, that soul of goodness which
the Creator has put in them. I was anxious to show that virtue may be
found in the bye-ways of the world, that it is not incompatible with
poverty and even with rags, and to keep steadily through life the motto,
expressed in the burning words of your Northern poet -
"The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that."
And in following this track, where could I have better assurance that I
was right, or where could I have stronger assurance to cheer me on than
in your kindness on this to me memorable night?
I am anxious and glad to have an opportunity of saying a word in
reference to one incident in which I am happy to know you were
interested, and still more happy to know, though it may sound
paradoxical, that you were disappointed--I mean the death of the little
heroine. When I first conceived the idea of conducting that simple story
to its termination, I determined rigidly to adhere to it, and never to
forsake the end I had in